The TEST sculpture provides an innovative example of
interaction between science and art, not abstractly interpreted as a result of a
subsequent critical analysis but indeed an active and creative collaboration between an
astrophysicist and a sculptor.

In order to comprehend the meaning of collaboration between scientists and
artists and to retrace its historical origin, we must go back to the Renaissance. There we
find the so-called Welianschaung and the idea of unitary art as a continuous and
inseparable process of recognition of the structure of reality. This underlies the
experience of Leonardo Da Vinci's talent, expressed in his drawings, of not separating
scientific enquiry from artistic research.
In the seventeenth century, the "climb to the stars" of the stage machinery in
baroque scenography, nourished by imagination, had loosened this link. It had coincided,
on the one hand, with experimental Galilean sciences pursuing exact research towards a
rational comprehension of the universe, and on the other hand, with the flourishing of the
poetics of subjectivity, taste and feeling, the beaux arts, and a stratification of
painting into specialistic genres.
In the nineteenth century, however, a new reversal of this trend can be observed: the
scientific achievements of H.L. Helmholtz in the field of optics and of E. Chevreul in
that of chemistry helps pointillistes painters in the separation of color.
Furthermore, at the beginning of the twentieth century I(1907) the Cubist revolution,
which changes the concepts of space and time towards a simultaneity of vision, is
synchronized with Einstein's theory of special relativity (1905).
The relationship between Remo
Ruffini and Attilio Pierelli was
not one of director/implementer nor could it exactly be defined as a four-handed
performance. It has instead been a line of work suggested to the artist by a graphic
design which had already been scientifically tested and computerized by M. Johnston and
Ruffini at Princeton University in 1974 (see figure).
This scientific investigation concerned the calculation of the geometric motion of five
particles moving in space-time according to the application of a solution of Einstein's
equations; the in vitro materialization and the visible replica of the discovery of
a phenomenon existing in our own galaxy, namely the black hole, consisting of a
stellar mass which is sucked into itself by gravitational collapse under the effect of its
own self-gravity.
The encounter between Ruffini and Pierelli was not just a coincidence. On the one hand,
there is the scientist, who in investigating astrophysical laws has always matched the
exactness of results with the acknowledgement of a natural elegance of formulas,
approaching an aesthetic outline of the detailed calculations. On the other hand, there is
the sculptor, who appeases his eagerness for geometry by the contemplation of intricate
reflecting symmetries and by perspective-illusive visions based on proportionate sizes,
with the intention of proving the poetry of pure science before it becomes a technological
adventure. In the theoretical formulation of his research on space, Pierelli has surveyed
the history of mathematical thought and non-Euclidean geometries, deriving his
hyperspatial shapes from the investigations of Gerolamo Saccheri, a Jesuit philosopher and
mathematician of the seventeenth century.
The intuition of the aesthetic potential of this new form derived from the integration of
Einstein's equations and describing the geodesics or trajectories of bodies around a black
hole is compared by Ruffini to the "Greeks' discovery of r and the circle, which led
to Hellenic architecture and the column" (interview with R. Ruffini by F. Bellonzi,
Rome, 1985). Initially in 1981 the structural novelty of this form was understood by the
architect Maurizio Sacripanti when he considered it as a space one can enter with one's
own body and perceive directly with one's senses (M. Sacripanti in Catalogo Roma, Palazzo
delle Esposizioni, 1981) (see figure).
The initiation of this new work has the flavor of a challenge that the sculptor makes to
himself, namely to represent the trajectories in a plastic form given their spatial
co-ordinates-height, width and length-and to reinterpret them as an aesthetic object,
using his own judgement to verify its artistic coherence.
The realization of this project seems to be conceptually complex and revolutionary. It is
meant to describe a motion, but not a terrestrial one, as the futurists and Boccioni had
already done in 1913 with the famous sculpture Unique forms in space continuity. Nor
should it be the motion of a body set free in the earth's gravitational field, which would
fall either vertically or with elliptical or hyperbolic motions. Instead it should
resemble a M6bius strip without being so simple, since it would be differentially dragged
by the rotational field of the black hole in the geometry of space-time. Hence the acronym
TEST which stands for "Traction of Events in Space-Time." Thus the sculpture has
no priviledged interpretational directions and no supporting pedestal which might
associate it with a central perspective view: no "top" or "bottom," no
"right-side" or "left-side." Any orientation gives a complete and
faithful realization (see figure).
Rather one should imagine it in rotation, with its surface being independent of any
relation with the source of natural light ("ambientation" is the fundamental
issue of sculpture), ignoring any possible atmospheric effect; in other words, the
opposite of a "Mobile" of Calder which awaits a gust of wind to reanimate itself
and come alive. Here, the metal light alone outlines and designs the vision of the
rotating black hole. The transformation of this sequence of events into a solid form is
portrayed by abstracting their properties and reducing everything to a direct perception
of its essence, a Wesenschau. This representation does not lend itself to
psychological or science-fictional interpretation and suggestion; the collective
imagination can perceive and attain an emotional projection and exemplification of the
universe, of egoism, since it involves a prehensile shape which absorbs and sucks in
matter. Moreover, the title TEST, only by pure chance, includes the monogram
"ET" which recalls the mythical encounter of a human being with the
extraterrestrial of Steven Spielberg's fairy-tale film. There the emblematic image of the
finger contact between the two had been borrowed from Michelangelo's Creation of Man in
the Sistine Chapel while the return to space resembled a mythical ascension on the trail
of the Christmas comet.
From a scientific point of view, the clear and lucid form of this sculpture might remind
one of the application of mathematical logic to ideographic instantaneity that Giuseppe
Peano carried out towards the end of the last century (G.C. Argan, 1985). And from a
properly artistic perspective, it can be related to the philosophy of Russian
Constructivism around 1920, and to the first clear perception, by Naum Gabo, of the unity
of all visible forms and of the existence of aesthetic ones only in accordance with
physical and mathematical laws.
In the more recent context, characterized towards the late seventies by strong
neo-expressionist and subjectivistic artistic movements, or neo-manner-ist re-evaluation
of art from the past, interaction with science has meant above all the adoption and use of
advanced technologies, the so-called "computer art." However, the use of media
totally different from the traditional ones can change only the visual perception of the
image and produce only a technical updating of the communication without necessarily
yielding a new artistic message. On the other hand a "snapshot" which is new in
concept and ichonography can also be expressed through the use of traditional and
experimented techniques. Its very novelty may be expressed through the use of modules of
different sizes and composition: namely the the form of a 20 cm silver object, as in 1985,
or in that of a 50cm bronze one, or in steel tubes, like the 340x470x260cm3 structure
which was shown at the Venice Biennial Exhibition of 1986.
In the silence of his studio the artist finds his knowing craftsmanship, in making the
moulds to be forged into metal and in his attempts to achieve the right shape of the
torsions which express the intuition of their artistic value, with the light and opacity
of the metal. With his mind, he tries not to betray the accuracy promised to the
measurements of the curvatures and strives to make them coincide with his own geometric
dream.
The discovery of a form which is not an invention, but bears the simple beauty and the
perfection of an archetype existing in nature, leads one to re-experience aesthetically
the same emotion that must have been felt by whoever discovered it first.